Thirteen SMU students, faculty and staff are in Rwanda from August 4-13, 2016 with SMU’s Embrey Human Rights Program. After the country’s 1994 genocide, in which as many as a million people were killed in 100 days, “history lives on,” says group leader and program director Rick Halperin. The group are visiting genocide sites and meeting with survivors, government representatives and representatives of NGOs, They are also carrying donated books, classroom supplies, toys and clothing to share with the schools and orphanages they are visiting. Continue reading →

Lindsay G. is a rising senior majoring in international studies and human rights. She travelled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo this summer with Army ROTC for closer study of the country’s culture and language. Continue reading →

Eighteen SMU students alums, faculty and community members are traveling to Italy March 4–12 to learn about the nearly 8,000 victims of the Holocaust in the country before and during World War II. The group is visiting sites in and around Rome, Florence, Bologna, Bolzano and Trieste to “confront the horrific crimes Germans committed against Jews and other innocent civilians, especially after Italy switched sides in 1943 and joined the Allied effort,” says Rick Halperin, director of the Embrey Human Rights Program, which is leading the trip. Continue reading →

Fourteen students, including 10 from SMU, took a study tour of Holocaust sites in Austria and the Czech Republic, Jan. 5-12. Led by SMU Embrey Human Rights Program Director Rick Halperin, Program Coordinator Sherry Aikman, the group visited cities and death camps throughout the region. Continue reading →

Twenty members of the SMU community took a study tour of Holocaust sites in Poland Dec. 18-30. Led by SMU Embrey Human Rights Program Director Rick Halperin, 17 SMU students, and 11 Dallas-area community members, traveled with two SMU staffers SMU faculty members, Dr. Vicki Hill, assistant dean for the University Curriculum, and Dr. Joci Caldwell Ryan, women’s and gender studies lecturer SMU’s Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. The group visited cities and death camps throughout Poland, where, during World War II, some 6,000, 000 people were murdered during the Nazi, Germany, occupation. The group also met with members of the organization Children of the Holocaust, in Warsaw, to hear first-hand stories of their experiences. Continue reading →

Hope is a junior majoring in human rights and history, and minoring in Spanish and sociology. She was awarded a Maguire and Irby Family Foundation Public Service Fellowship for summer 2015 from the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at SMU for her work in social justice. Continue reading →

Jennifer is a senior majoring in human rights and public policy. She was awarded a Maguire and Irby Family Foundation Public Service Fellowship for summer 2015 from the Cary M. Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility at SMU for her work in community development. Continue reading →

An update from Katie A., a graduate student in the Liberal Studies program: Yesterday we went to the site of the Washita Massacre in western Oklahoma. The site is surrounded by a beautiful landscape of tall prairie grasses and beautiful … Continue reading →

Thirteen SMU students and faculty and staff members will travel the American West June 2–12 to visit Native American reservations and historic sites “to study past and present struggles of our country’s indigenous people – all too often our forgotten people,” says Rick Halperin, director of SMU’s Embrey Human Rights Program, sponsoring the trip for the first time. While in Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska the group will visit such places as the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota and the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn in Montana. Continue reading →